The Gifted Review: eXtraction/X-roads (Season 1 Episodes 12 and 13)

The Gifted Season 1 Episodes 12 and 13 “eXtraction” and “X-Roads” function essentially as an oversized season finale that has been divided into two parts.

Quite often, a two-parter can feel a bit extraneous and self-important, but this surprisingly works for The Gifted given that it’s thematically similar but executed differently.

“eXtraction” revolves around Polaris, Thunderbird, Blink, and Eclipse reluctantly working with the Cuckoo sisters to track down Dr. Campbell (Garret Dillahunt) while the Struckers try to get to Reed’s mother (Sharon Gless) before Sentinel Services can.

A lot of “eXtraction” (and the following episode to a more nuanced extent) deals with the growing parallel between Polaris and Andy’s gradual turn to a darker version of themselves and the ways in which they’re being pushed in that direction by a myriad of external instigators.

Andy, for one, already having been nudged by the triplets, is looking more actively into his family’s history and out of that comes a greater need to be more proactive and, yes, even violent against the humans who hunt him and the rest of the Underground.

Polaris, likewise, is obviously being manipulated by the Cuckoos as they try to steer her towards following her father’s path in the Hellfire Club.

The parallel the series is ultimately going for is rather repetitive and, quite frankly, dull most of the time. “eXtraction,” for all intents and purposes, is a setup to get us to the meat of “X-Roads” without having to build character motivations and instead dive into the action.

Divided into two fronts again, the episode centers on Thunderbird, Eclipse, and Blink as they try to stop Polaris from destroying the airplane Dr. Campbell is on as the Underground Headquarters is under attack from Sentinel Services.

The Polaris side of the episode works much better than the Underground section for the simple reason that it takes dynamics we already understand to their most extreme points. There have been bits of this turn teased throughout the season, but now they have come to fruition.

The Underground section, however, has the Struckers as our only real anchor during those scenes and puts them in a position of authority that feels profoundly unearned. This is largely a fault of the show since the only characters other than the Struckers that we know and care about aren’t there and everyone else feels like a Red Shirt from Star Trek. 

These two sections of the episode come to a head in ways that shouldn’t work nearly as well as they do. Despite it feeling slightly unearned and threatening to come across as flat, it still brings a lot of weight in the final moments of the episodes.

These episodes bring to a close what has been largely a mediocre season of television. Still, something decent has been pulled out in the end.

What did you think of this episode of The Gifted? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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The Gifted airs Mondays at 9/8c on Fox.

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